


Coming Home

by Canon_Is_Relative



Category: The Martian (2015), The Martian - Andy Weir
Genre: Angsty Schmoop, Going Home, Light Angst, M/M, Platonic Cuddling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-10
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-04-25 16:36:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4968319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canon_Is_Relative/pseuds/Canon_Is_Relative
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mission day 691, people. I’ve come home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ImpishTubist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImpishTubist/gifts).



> For Imp, obviously. 
> 
> her: GIVE ME COPIOUS AMOUNTS OF PLATONIC TOUCHING  
> me: okay ♥

Cats are, like, freakishly sensual. Some of them, anyway. There was this cat my folks took in a long time ago; whenever you came into the room he’d roll over and wait for you to get with the program and rub his belly, kneading the air with his paws and purring hard enough to make you fear for the building’s integrity. It always made me kind of uncomfortable, his voluptuous display of hedonism. 

 

God, I haven’t thought about that cat in ages. But there I was, lying on the couch in the rec, my head in Johanssen’s lap while Vogel rubbed my feet. He’d made some quip I only half understood because I’d been lazy and let my German get rusty while I was busy, well, not-dying on Mars. An unconscionable lapse, I know, and maybe that’s what Vogel was teasing me about when I basically shoved my feet at him and demanded he _give_ _my Mars-trodden feet their due,_ but I wasn’t really listening. I heard Beck’s name in there eventually, and tuned in enough to hear something about how I might prefer _Doctor’s Hands,_ then a smirk from Vogel and a giggle from Beth. But Beck was just sitting off in the corner, watching us and almost-smiling, shaking his head. 

 

Jesus, though. I was in heaven. Mission day 691, my own little slice of heaven: Hands on my head and hands on my feet, blunt nails scratching along my skull, carding through the hair I’d finally been able to wash and callouses catching on the newly healed scabs on my soles…Heaven. Seriously.  _Mission day 691, Jesus._

 

I cracked open my heavy eyelids to find what I’d expected to see. Beck’s own eyes fixed on me. And this time, he didn’t blink or flinch or look away. _Hey, handsome,_ I said. Or maybe I just thought I said it out loud. I’ll admit I’ve got some adjusting to do. But either way, Chris was still looking at me, and that tug at his lips, that human expression I’d spent 543 sols desperate to catch a glimpse of, I wasn’t imagining it.

 

I stretched out, like a goddamn spoiled cat, and yeah. I got what I was going for, because if being down there taught me anything, and let’s be honest it taught me roughly ten hundred thousand things I’m still working out, one of them was that every movement counts, everything I do matters and therefore nothing I have control of is actually accidental. Just solve the problem and get what you’re after. And this time, with my goddamn selfish wriggling, I was after the feeling of Beth’s thighs flexing and tensing under my head and neck. Vogel’s freakishly strong hands closing around my ankle and thigh, like he was afraid I was going to, I don’t know, fall off the couch like a little baby? I don’t know what was going through their minds at the time, but I do know what was on loop in mine. _I’m here. I’m not there, I’m here. I’m here, and they’ve got me_. _And also, Beck’s looking at me like he’s never going to blink again._

 

Which would be a shame for him. Not blinking would probably dry out his eyeballs and make them shrivel up like grapes in the sun and then how would he survive without the privilege of gazing on this gift to mankind that is my…

 

Wait. I think I should have saved that grape-in-the-sun metaphor for something more apt. _My body_ was supposed to be the privilege without which life would not be worth living, but I’ve been reliably informed that I am emaciated. Kind of hard to tell with no frame of reference, but I’ll go with it. I’m certainly hungry enough to believe it. And anyway, I don’t actually know what not-blinking would do to a man’s eyes. I’m only a botanist, after all. 

 

Even a botanist has his limits, though. 

 

“Hey, handsome.” Out loud this time, for real and true. And it worked, it brought him over to me, drawn like a magnet to my side. Metaphors are funny things when you’re in space and someone doesn’t just look like they’re walking on air, they actually are. His hands were soft and incredibly warm when they folded around mine. Hands like a preview to the way he curled his body around me, his ear pressed to my chest and I willed my heart to beat steady and true, couldn’t stand the thought of making him worry any more. An extra five-hundred-odd days in space for them and who knows how many millions of dollars for NASA, and I’d never felt guilty until just that moment, when I realized my fingers were digging in hard to the back of his neck. That I was probably hurting him.

 

 “So, hey,” I said, “I’ve had some time to think about it, and I’ve been wondering. I gotta know, what’s an EVA specialist like you doing on a ship like this?”

 

All right, I admit. Mars has dulled my pickup lines. But hey. He’s been in space for approximately ten million years, it’s not like he’s heard anything better recently. 

 

So, yeah. He lifted his head and smiled at me, no — grinned. Chris Beck grinned at me and squeezed my hand, laughed out loud and didn’t even blink away the tears filming over his, okay, wow, his really fucking beautiful eyes. 

 

Mission day 691, people. I’ve come home.


End file.
